Book Image

QGIS 2 Cookbook

By : Mandel, Olaya Ferrero, Anita Graser
Book Image

QGIS 2 Cookbook

By: Mandel, Olaya Ferrero, Anita Graser

Overview of this book

QGIS is a user-friendly, cross-platform desktop geographic information system used to make maps and analyze spatial data. QGIS allows users to understand, question, interpret, and visualize spatial data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps. This book is a collection of simple to advanced techniques that are needed in everyday geospatial work, and shows how to accomplish them with QGIS. You will begin by understanding the different types of data management techniques, as well as how data exploration works. You will then learn how to perform classic vector and raster analysis with QGIS, apart from creating time-based visualizations. Finally, you will learn how to create interactive and visually appealing maps with custom cartography. By the end of this book, you will have all the necessary knowledge to handle spatial data management, exploration, and visualization tasks in QGIS.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
13
Index

Using WMS and WMS Tiles


Web Map Services (WMS), one of the first OGC web services created, provides a method for dynamic raster generation served over the Web. They are a compromise between the flexibility of WFS and the speed of Tile services.

Getting ready

There are several iterations of WMS, and QGIS supports most of them. To use a WMS, you need to give QGIS the GetCapabilities URL of the service that you want to view data from.

How to do it…

  1. Find a WMS service that you want to use and copy the GetCapabilities URL. In this recipe, we can use the Geoserver demo website (http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/web/).

    Tip

    As with other web services, it's more efficient if you load your local layers and zoom to their extent first. This enables you to not waste time loading data from web services for extents outside your area of interest.

  2. Open the Add WMS dialog.

  3. Create a New connection.

  4. Assign a Name of your choosing and paste in the URL (http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/ows?service=wms&version=1...